Even though it's him, I'm shy at first and lie with my back to him, a leg forward, relaxing. He can't see me, not my face. He doesn't know I can see him in the fragment of mirror that is not crowded by the tangle of clothes strewn over it, or the clutter on his ancient dresser. The pillow is stale.

He's not even watching me, reaches down under the stool, fetches out a pouch and papers and rolls a smoke. Elbows on his knees. Feet bare, knees spread, khaki pants loose and baggy and rolled up at the ankles, not so much as the beginning of a bulge where any normal man should have one by now. He lights the smoke and shakes out the match, reaches up under the black tee-shirt and scratches his chest.

I sigh to get his attention. I don't like it when he ignores me. I don't like it when he pretends we are strangers and he is gone some place inside his head I can never reach. Not even doing this.

He hears my sigh and glances up, squints into the smoke, and this makes me tingle. One moment I'm dry and uncomfortable, the next my body murmurs and my finger glides. A flicker of warmth. I know he can see, but pretending he can't see I push inside, a little way. The sensation is very pleasant because he is watching.

I ask the wall, 'Are you enjoying it?'

He comes and sits on the bed, up against the pillow behind me. The mattress creaks. Not the bed. The mattress. Now I can't see him, and I guess he can't really see me, not what I'm doing. I hear him suck the cigarette, blow a whistle as he exhales. I nearly laugh. A wobbly smoke ring drifts over across my shoulder. I puff at it. It eddies and disintegrates.

He says, 'What about you?'

'Give me time.'

I roll onto my tummy, climb over next to him, fingers curled. Now I'm doing it. He touches my bottom, gently, affectionately smoothing its roundness. There are times when I think he means it. I hope he does. I snap the cheeks, make it tight.

'Is this how you do it. When no one's watching?'

I nod. This really is.

'Does Albert know?'

'He knows nothing about what I do.'

'And that's the way you want it.'

'He's very sweet. He calls me his Angel.'

'You look like an angel. The way your hair falls like that.' He picks it up, combs it through his fingers.

I smile at the silly things he says. His non-sexual affection is rare. I watch him. Today for some reason he wants to be a stranger, but then, no. His dark, narrow eyes are familiar. The small feminine nose. The masculine chin. I like his lips, kissable and always moist, his tongue sly and poised, ready to dart. I think I like his eyebrows the most. He is not handsome in the way a woman usually calls a man handsome. Not even as good-looking as Albert.

And yet?

When we make love I pinch and claw at him because he makes me want it so much. It's the eyebrows, finely drawn, high and arched. Perched. Querying. Doubting. Arrogant. Harsh. Tender. Cruel. But oh so kind. When we make love I climb up on my hands and lick them. When I do that he pulls me down. Roughly. Carelessly. When he pulls me down I know he wants me, and I come.

He says, 'Albert.' Puffs the smoke. Checks to see it's properly lit. Flakes of ash flutter onto his shirt and he flicks them away. 'Names are funny when you think about them.' He says it again. 'Albert.'

'What sort of a name's Kempsey.' It's a beautiful name. On him. 'I call him Al. That's ok. He might be Alexander or Alfonso or Alan. It's all the same to me.'

'I'd call him Allegro. You've made him wait long enough.'

'Wasn't my fault. It was only to be for three months.'

'A lot more than that.'

'Ten more days.'

'And then?'

And then. There should be no more of this nonsense. 'No more of this.'

He chuckles. 'Tell me lover. Do you think so? You'll make love to me. Over and over. Be careful who you cry out for in your nuptial bed.'

'You're very sure of yourself.'

'You can stop doing what you're doing. If you like.'

'I don't like.'

He chuckles again. He knows I won't stop until I'm done, one way or another. He says, 'Why is your lip trembling.'

'This is getting nice.'

'I can't see.'

I roll away, pull down a pillow. The room is getting dark in the late evening, the blinds drawn to the sill, as ever. I can see why, the roller come away from it's cradle at one end. This would take five minutes to fix. It's been like this for the whole of the time I've known him, coming here. The curtains are grubby, stained yellow, too, the ceiling. Cobwebs in the corners. The floor is littered with books and cd's and empty guitar string packets and magazines and clothes and boots, and lots of other things I don't care to know about. This is not the bedroom of a man his age. Give me half a day and the room wouldn't know itself. But give me half a day and I would spend it on the bed. With him.

Or it's the kind of room I'd love to have an hour in, alone, just me, the room, and the smell of him. There are some gerberas growing wild and unappreciated in his garden. They would brighten the room. I could put them in a vase, on the table under the window so when I looked down between my breasts and knees they would be framed by me and the light. Flowers are sexy. Their petals soft. Their stems interesting.

'Touch my breasts.'

'They're breasts today?'

'They'll be tits in a minute.'

I want him to touch me. Anywhere. Give me some attention. Especially tonight I need reassurance. Instead the bed heaves and creaks and he goes and squats at the ashtray by the stool.

He needs a haircut, shaggy over the frayed collar. He's got a drawer full of shirts, the new ones I've bought him; shirts, jeans, shoes, socks. He doesn't wear them. He's waiting until they get old. I like buying him underpants. Bold colours. I hold them up in the shop and imagine him slipping into them, tucking himself away, my precious toys. Then I have to buy them. He'll never know that some of them, at home alone, I've tried them on. I put a hand inside and fondle till my knees jitter. I give them to him and he smiles and puts them away.

He kneels at the end of the bed, chin on his hands. I pull my knees up, open a little. He likes what he sees.

'Do this for Albert.'

'No.'

'Why not? He'd enjoy it.'

'It's a part of me.'

'You're doing it now.'

'You are a part of me.'

He has never really understood. I do this for him because he is the part of me that wants to do it, needs to do it. He is passive. Never censoring. Rarely comments. Just looks at me like a reflection in a mirror might look at me.

'We don't have much time.'

Do I mean tonight, or do I mean forever? This isn't decided for me yet, and the girl inside has so much to explore. The thought of it makes me anxious, a fluttering panic. I spread. Close. Squeeze until my knuckles go white. In ten more days, who would I do this for?

'Albert would like it. A gift.'

'No he wouldn't. He'd be horrified. I'm his sweet lady. His Angel. Nothing like this has so much as entered my head. I wear dresses. I don't smoke. I don't fart. I don't say fuck. I don't moan when I need to come. I am my mother's daughter. I will be his childrens' mother. I cry at weddings. I squeal at surprises. I want to be a bride.'

He reads my mind, comes up next to me, touches, pokes a noncommittal finger into my belly-button. I push him over, climb across his chest. He blinks at me from the pillow, his laughter captured in a grin, eyebrows risen and mocking. Daring.

Well, I'm game. I put a hand on the wall and squat over his face, finger myself open. I can feel his breath. I kiss his forehead, brush it with the lips. Kisses on his cheeks. A hesitant kiss on his nose, his lips, his eyelids. He strokes my bottom, holds me, kisses me in return, a real kiss man to woman. I wet his chin.

He flings his tee-shirt and pants away in the direction of the dresser and I lie between his legs. It's like opening a present. I pull down the waist band of his underpants - blue today - half way down his penis, a nose protruding from dark curling hair. Wolfman. No eyes. Just fluffy hair and a pink fleshy nose. I give it a kiss.

I love the dryness of him, the softness as though his skin were talc. A lovely present. He's showered since coming home from work, shampoos his pubic hair. I like that. Smells so fresh. He smells fresh and then I take him and he smells of sex. I lie with my cheek on the cushion at the crease of his thigh and smell him and slip a hand down underneath. Resume. Just the fingertips. I shiver through the urge.

Was it fate or just a cruel irony? I tell him, 'I met you the next day, the morning after he proposed.' I can hear a heartbeat. It quickens, stalls, quickens, stalls. Any time I feel like it, I can put my mouth over him, have him grow inside, between my lips.

'You've told me.'

'I had sex with you and I went home and cried. I've never been happy since. I've never been happier since.'

'I suppose not.'

'I don't think you know what I've given you.'

I should be at home. Shouldn't I. Doing things. Albert will be calling. And calling and calling. Wondering where the hell I am. Again. Getting peeved. The phone always rings the moment I get in my door and it's him and he says, 'Where were you?' Angry, then silent. I say something sexy, tell him I love him. He likes to hear that.

Well, anyway, I've left a note for him on my door. If he gets angry enough perhaps he will drive around and find it, perhaps he won't. A kind of roulette. I like games of chance, especially when losing is winning.

I lift Kempsey's penis out, rest it down over the waist band. It's nice having it close, right here with me. This is where our relationship begins and ends. Doesn't it. I let him taste my fingers and his cock thickens, pulses, subsides. It takes forever to get him hard, forever to make him come. I haven't known very many men, but those I've known have been much like Albert.

'Poor Albert.'

Dearest Albert. If he behaves himself, the sweet ordinary man, if he doesn't do anything stupid, tonight, he can have me again, in just ten more days. It will have been worth his wait. I'll make it so.

We might sit and watch movies, alone on my couch, and I let him touch my breasts. I keep him hard. He thinks I don't know, but I see it. I let him put a hand between my legs, and then he can't hide it any more. When it's time for him to go, I whisper goodnight, kiss him at the door, give him a squeeze. And I shake my head. No, you can't stay. You've promised. Then I close the door and my panties are down before he's snapped himself into his seat-belt. I can come before he's purred from my driveway complacently innocent of me. Or I stand in the darkness of my room, at the window, watch his tail-lights until they vanish along the road through the trees. Then my senses vanish. These are the long nights where I learn a little more of myself, and in the morning I hide my face in the pillow. My depravity was lonely until I met Kempsey.

He adjusts his penis, makes it comfortable, fingers back the skin. 'Why poor Albert?'

'I came home from a girl's party. A while ago, back when we were still having sex. I was drunk and he was waiting at my house with some of the other guys. When the others left I went down on him in the hallway.'

I'm lying. I've never done this to Albert. None of this happened.

'Then lucky Albert.' Kempsey's voice is soft.

'Aren't you going to ask?'

'Ask what.'

'If I took it in the mouth.'

'Did you?'

'No. I opened my blouse and let him do it inside. Between my breasts.'

'Lucky Albert.'

'And I buttoned myself up and kissed him goodnight and sent him home.'

Hell. Kempsey sighs. He strokes my hair and cheek and I watch his penis. It thickens, for real this time, rises, hovers, vaults over onto his stomach.

'You like that.'

'Yes.'

'You can do it if you want.'

'We'll see.'

'I wouldn't mind. If you wanted to.'

'We'll see.'

I clasp his penis lightly to catch the last of its growth. Each time I touch him erect, he takes my breath away. It's as though I've forgotten him. Albert is the longer, but Kempsey is fat and heavy. Gnarly. He fucks angry. He gets truly hard, so hard that it won't bend and when he rises over me, into me, to come, it hurts. And later my pussy stings and I know I've been with him. Now and then when Albert touches me between the legs I have to suck a sharp breath. He thinks I'm aroused. He feels the dampness of my panties and thinks I'm aroused. And I am. Constantly. Knowing Kempsey.

His cock is inscrutable. Kempsey is inscrutable. I stroke him and roll his balls and flutter my fingers on the glans, mine to play with, and he enjoys without participation, amused that he can defeat me. The only sign of an involuntary pleasure is the first bead of moisture. I'm sure if he could, he would prevent this. I gather it on a fingertip, take it down, a balm for my girl.

I kiss his testicles. Mouth them. I nuzzle them and they flow beneath my lips. I nibble the loose skin and hair. I run my fingers up over his belly, to a firm breast, pinch the nipple.

He says, 'Hey.' I pinch it harder.

He treats me as though it were none of his business what I do, how I do it. Not until he's ready. But I knew this. I knew he was like this when I saw him at the newsstand, rummaging in his baggy pockets for the price of a magazine. And I spoke to him. And he took me home. And he fucked me. And I climbed him and I came and I licked his face. I've never licked anyone's face.

'I need to come.'

He doesn't move. Doesn't arrange himself. Doesn't offer to love me. I climb and step over him onto my knees. His cock brushes underneath and I wait for him to part the lips, to rest the glans captured between them.

I hate him and yet my cunt betrays me. It kisses and mouths at him. I know he can feel it. I stroke his belly and pull the hairs and I hate him for making me do this. I claw him with my nails and make the skin glow red and I hate him because he won't kiss me or hug me or tell me he loves me or pull my nipples when I want him to. I tell myself I hate him and drop with all my weight.

Shit.

I push and hold, cramping already. But why not. I was nearly coming as I fingered. As I opened over his mouth. When he knelt at the end of the bed. When I pulled into his driveway. When I awoke, this morning, wet and urgent, my first waking thoughts of him.

We roll and he switches on the bedlamp. He kneels between my legs, sits away, Buddha-like, resides with his thighs spread open and cock powerful and arching upward from his hair. He is not afraid to be male. His body is so lean and taut that his penis and balls are pornographically prominent. And the glans is shiny now, scarlet, and it nods in sympathy with a heartbeat. Just below him is my girl, my fluffy bush, parted and spread. Lush.

We often deny one another, just like this. We listen to our breathing, the sound of skin on skin. It is a silent communion, an erotic meditation. It is the holiest of stillnessess that hovers like a pink veil between the moments of gentle love and our anima and animus entwined in maddened lust.

And then when I am with him, like this, I feel flushed, luxurious. Spoiled and pampered. I lift my breasts to unknown lovers. I stretch and yield my body, utterly, show him beneath my arms where I am damp and scented. His mouth often goes there, the skin as sensitive as a nipple, not like a nipple. I feel the memory of lips, tiny licks, his kisses.

'Kempsey?'

What can he see? I guess he can see I'm wet, that under the hair I am full and hot. He can't know that at the sight and smell of his erect penis how I itch inside. My arousal is not as manifest as his. Yet he knows.

I show him my clit.

'Kempsey?'

He shuffles forward, touches me at the centre of the flower. He uses his penis like a finger, touches the lips, prepares me, bumps my clitoris. I sigh. Sigh again.

'Tell me you love me.'

I want him in and I put him where he should be, rise up to him. Swallow him whole. He falls over me, onto me, into me. He withdraws, pushes, glides. I love it that he closes his legs, presses his balls against me. We are snug. But I need motion.

'I don't.'

'I think you do.'

I urge him and the mattress creaks and I hold him at the small of the back to feel him move. I hear his soft noises and I lift my legs, lock them over, spread my knees. Open. Wet. He murmurs my name. His arms are tight and I cling to him, his head at my shoulder. He nips at me and his whiskers are rough and I hear him puffing, and all of this communicates pleasure. I need this, the smell and sight and sound of him, his muscular body getting off on me.

I come long before he does. And I come again. And I never mind that I have to wait and take him until his mood alters and he begins to strain. I feel naked and pull him deep, hold him. I whisper to myself, 'Do it inside. Way up inside.' I make myself tight, give him my neck, very nearly come again. But I don't need that. His pleasure is now my pleasure. I have come but I won't be satisfied, can't be satisfied, until he is.

He stops so suddenly that I am left teetering at a precipice, stunned, out of breath. I open my eyes and he is above me, up on his hands, eyes dark and menacing, unfocused. He is looking through me, deeply into secret places. He trembles, straining to control himself. If I squeeze, if I moan, if I kiss him, he will come. I keep very still. His chest heaves, lips clenched tight, breath hissing through his nose as he fights his orgasm. I haven't seen this before. It is exciting.

When it's safe and he's pulled back I touch his arm, stroke him tenderly. His skin is humid, and he is arousing me all over again.

'What is it?'

He returns, moves within me. 'Can you feel it?'

'Of course. Silly.'

'I mean really feel it.'

He pushes and there is a vague hardness in a place I can't name, everywhere and nowhere. He gets on his toes, presses his pubis firmly against the furry cushion of mine, extends himself. There is sensation that threatens to hurt, not quite. It is a closeness. No more of me to fill, no more of him to take. I still don't understand.

He lifts a hair from my face, his eyes going between mine, searching for something. He is so intense that he makes me want to giggle, inappropriately. I can't help it. Either come or giggle. This is so strange.

And through his motionlessness there is something else. Fuck. The tension of a threatening orgasm stalks me, leaps at me in ambush, and without fangs it retreats. This is so confusing, beautiful, frustrating. Oddly satisfying. I try to hug him, pull him down to me. He resists, and when I try to kiss his arm he shrugs me away. When I squirm my belly against him, he presses on me. Stop it.

'Kempsey. What are you doing.'

He says, 'Don't come.'

He takes the pressure away and the urge retreats, just a little so I remain full of love and anger and I'm sensitive and I need to bite. He puts my hands up under the pillows, under my head, spreads my knees so they are flat on the mattress and tangled sheets. I won't move, and there is a rebellion in his mood as though he has picked up on mine. He touches a nipple with the tip of a finger and it shrivels, instantly, into an prickling ball. He touches the other and I watch him carelessly flick and vibrate the wrinkled stalk. He touches my lips and my hungry mouth sucks at his finger.

'Don't so this.'

He whispers, 'Don't move.'

He reaches down between us, under me, strokes where I don't usually like it. I clench and relax, sweaty where his fingers are. He whispers directly into my ear, 'Is this what you want?' His finger teases. He licks my neck like a kitten.

It is maddening. The touch burns me inside. 'Yes.'

He waits for me to close my eyes and give him a breathless sigh. I feel his kisses going around my neck, straying toward my breasts. He says, 'I want you to call Albert.'

I hear only the rush of blood. I pull on him, needing a harder kiss, his mouth on mine to taste it. His finger and penis warm my whole body. I can't keep still any more. I don't want to. He brings his mouth close to mine, doesn't kiss, and I breathe his intoxicating breath. I push on his finger and writhe and glide slowly against him so the sensations become one, deliciously aggravating. I can taste it at the back of my throat, a succulent flavour. He puts my hands back up under the pillow where they are supposed to be. I lift my nipples against his chest to relieve the ache.

And I moan to get something out that won't come out. 'Please Kempsey. What are you doing?'

'Making love to you.'

'You are killing me.'

'I want you to call Albert.'

He goes down my body, quickly, regardlessly. I can't stop him and anyway my thighs go round and clamp his head and with the caress of his mouth my pussy recovers from the grief of emptiness. He tears me apart, fingers over my clit shielding it from his tongue, from my own fingers, his serpent's tongue flicking in and out.

'I won't call him.'

He pushes my legs to my chest, smacks me so hard that with the shock I spring open. I've kicked him on the chin and shoulder. He pulls away, rubs himself, amused and alert to me.

I am hot with anger. 'Don't ever do that again.'

'Oh really?'

'What the fuck is the matter with you?' Fuck. What is the matter with me? 'Eat me.'

His tongue isn't long enough or hard enough to soothe the longing, and yet I tug on his head, wanting this, wanting his lips in my hair. I pull his ears and wet his face because if I don't come very soon I am going to tear the walls down. But I can't come. Not like this. I squirm over him, onto his face, smother him. See how he likes it, if this is what he wants. I have him under me and I grab handfuls of hair and slip forward. There. Eat that. He heaves and bucks, throws me off, gulps at the air.

I dive on him, cover his mouth with mine, cover his ears so he cannot hear what I have already heard but denied, outside, a hush that is too familiar to excite me any more, too expected to frighten me, here and now, like this.

I hold Kempsey's mouth and kiss the infinite sweetness of those lips. I tell him, 'We have no time.'

He doesn't know what I know. He breaks the kiss and touches my face.

He says, 'Call him and tell him where you are.' He catches his breath, speaks slowly, deliberately. 'Tell him what we are doing, right now. Tell him what you have been doing, here, with me, in this bed. If you call him and tell him this, then I will tell you I love you. That I've loved you since the beginning. Since I first saw you.'

I shush him with a finger. 'It doesn't matter now.'

It stings madly where he smacked me, and I am hot like fire where his cock has been, everywhere his mouth has been, everywhere his fingers have probed and caressed. Every sexual part of me is full of blood and pulse and life. I've never felt more excited, aroused. It is happening. No one will rescue me.

'Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

'Please Kempsey. Not now.'

I open my mouth over his, suck his tongue. There's no more to say, not tonight. I have his tongue in my mouth and I climb across his belly and his shaft slips inside almost unfelt. I whisper into his mouth, 'Your finger. . .' His hand creeps along the bumps of my spine as though counting them, and almost too late he finds the place just above his cock. We are in perfect harmony. I hold his face and his ears and move my body so the pleasure obliterates the sounds he mustn't hear. Not yet.

Is it my imagination that I hear the muted chime of loose change rattled in a pocket. I know what it is, and I hate it. I loathe it.

There is only one light on in the house. The bedroom. Where we are. I cradle Kempsey's head and kiss him and move my body. 'Please hurry. . .' My car is outside in the driveway, so there can be no mistake, no explanation, no excuse and no reason for other than my own greedy lust.

I'm doing it right this time, and he can't resist. I hold him and feel his orgasm and watch the flutter of his eyes, the shuddering tremble of his lips. It is like a bleeding as the lust drains away and pools inside me. He sobs into my shoulder. He wants my breast and I give it to him. Anything, so long as he hurries. And I wait for the last of his sighs to give him the softest caresses, the gentlest kisses, the warmest comforts of my body.

He is so absorbed in our lovemaking that he hasn't heard the first knocking. Or the second, angry and insistent. But he hears the thump of a fist, the rattle of the door, the distant growl of a voice, a man's voice. His eyes snap open. He is ready to be alarmed, afraid for us, but he sees something in my eyes that tells him to be calm. The house booms with the thud of heavy fists banged together on the door and I feel the shocks echoed in Kempsey's body. I smile to reassure him, and climb away, give him a hug. I wish I were as brave as I pretend. If I am going to cry, it will be much later.